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Oma had planned her visit to capture both dad's and Emma's birthdays. On Emma's birthday, we started as usual with unwrapping the presents in the kitchen. Her main present was a new bike. As she is slightly taller then Piet was on his seventh birthday, we gave her a slightly bigger size, which means she now rides the bigger bike of the two. She can just touch the ground.
In the evening, Emma was allowed to choose her dinner. Predictably, we had noodles, pizza and fries on the sofa while watching Beauty and the Beast. This is Juultje's favourite DVD, but she only gets the Dutch version (Belle en het beest). Emma was allowed the English soundtrack on her birthday, which we all found rather strange; Piet and dad even disliked it.
The next day Mum and Juultje dropped oma off at the airport. Fortunately, she did not experience any delays on her return trip this time.
Fun fact party
After Piet's science party, Emma wanted a fact party. Mum made a
fact cake. We obviously did a
treasure hunt, where each clue also had a
fun fact that had to be
read first. The party went smoothly: Emma had invited only a select group of
girl friends, one parent was able to stay and Juultje had been taken to the playground.
The girls played spin the bottle to determine the order in which Emma would unwrap the presents. We had another game for which the quiz questions and, separately, the answers had been hidden in the front garden, verandah, backyard and sandpit. We also played musical statues (Piet played the baritone), with balloons, musical chairs and had the cake.
Pappa went away on business trip for a week. Mum and the kids coped well, in part relying on friends to help out with pre and after school activities. On his return, we built the stilts Emma got for her birthday and practiced with them in the back lane. Emma, Piet and mum ran the two kilometer fun run along the beach front. Emma finished in 12 minutes, while Piet and mum took three minutes more ue to a stitch.
Walk with Juultje
The last weekend in May, we went to Kuringai Chase national park for a
walk. We saw some aboriginal engravings in rocks. Juultje was keen to
walk or
run most of the way down to the beach herself. Otherwise, she preferred to be carried
on an arm rather than in a rucksack. We continued down to the
beach, were we had lunch and drew
animal tracks in the sand. On the way back up, Juultje wanted to be carried and dad pulled a calf muscle, possibly as a result. He is getting old. He can't run for a month and the doctor prescribed him some anti-inflammatory tablets.
Piet went to his band camp with his friends. In February the training band started playing and Piet started his baritone lessons. The kids spent the Thursday and Friday - no school for them - practising with the other 30-odd kids in the training band and gave a concert at the end, for which Lum (Grannybunts) and opa came over. The weekend was filled with storm and 225mm of rain in Sydney - other places in New South Wales got double that.
